


In The Skin of Dragons

by allyiisms



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22877110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyiisms/pseuds/allyiisms





	In The Skin of Dragons

* * *

**Ishiguru.**

_Jhunkai_

_  
石黒_

* * *

Mori thought about how his father had a very despotic face. Though it gave nothing of pleasantry and everything of affront and grievances, his words were always measured and received in the absolute with neither the room for question nor objection. As his son, court scribe and scholar, this bred both admiration and fear; it was not a perfect balance of the two- but he considered himself more lucid than the blind fanatics who lap his feet and kiss his ring- noble creatures with the bearing of sniffling, salivating forest hounds. Ranmaru knows this, knows that his son a mind and wisdom more keen-edged than most, courtesy of the dynastic intellect natural to their blood. Ishiguru is the polestar of their people’s breeding, he’d always say, and while he complains of the late scant sun and how the rain makes old scars hurt, Mori knows well that he is content to visit the people’s square on Obori 死の. Death day. Old Kanji monks dance in plumed masks and headdresses on stilted stages, dazzling children and their mothers. Province warriors and their troops kneel before erected displays of lacquered armour, honouring dead soldiers. Civilians and shamanists convene to set aflame offerings of livestock, paper-mache gold bars, willow branches and personals of dead loved ones. Mori expects more to come, throughout the night, the festivity will churn out dances, prayers and bonfires until the throngs merge into thickets, into a forest of warm bodies. He takes the time to explore with the permission of his father, who chooses to remain on the scarlet trestle, bodied by the rest of the Tokugawa as well-wishers kiss his beringed hand. ‘Take care to not lose sight of the entourage,’ he says.

Mori, a prince of a kind in this province, does not jostle his way through the people, they part for him with downturned eyes and half-bows, fluid, mannerly, careful in their paths not to touch his fine, dark silks. He happens upon a puppet show in the middle of the square, surrounded by folks mostly small and curious, pairs of dark eyes fixed on a painted tent. Mori observes the scenes on the drawn curtains with an artist’s delight. Woollen monarchs of Tumanese land- a rendition of the slain king and his queen, their children, faces made uneven from the draping; hunting scenes of sportive peasants splashing in ponds, stags at bay, horses held on silk leashes, ladies at their helm in jaunty hats and bright robes, and other scenes of secular pleasure; sailing white and blue skies dotted with bluebirds in flight. Florid, and made otherworldly with brush and paint, but when the curtains are drawn with atmosphere and ceremony- the audience gasps at what it conceals- a stone-wheel dressed in harrowing prints of masked demons and corpses, a precursor to the likeness of the story to be told and jarring opposite of the summery paintings that flank it.

So the stone begins to spin, the tale proceeds with naught an storyteller’s narration, but the brooding clickclickclickclick of the mechanism beneath. Something grey, sad and sullen brews above these heads. A king, a queen, and their children, dining in a banquet hall with pleated holly twine; the infamous Bulganji Palace. A puppet appears, made of rag, twine and beans with strangely convincing character, then a golden lion with blond fur, who demands the crown, and as the king draws his sword in his duty to protect, the lion rips off his head- out pours ribboned streams of red vellum, fluttering, spilling, to a gasps in the audience. The wheel spins still. In the fourth panelling, the queen is torn away from her children and into shreds, and they hide. Fifth panel; they’re behind a table. Sixth, behind a tapestry. Seventh, the princess reaches shakily for her father’s bloodied crown, and the prince for his headless body. The tale goes on- more puppets appear, more wires and red vellum and the slow, ominous ticking persists. The prince eventually wears the bloodied crown, takes the throne, goes mad, murders his sister and roasts lions on a spit. Soon black imps rise from the earth, take the prince by his heels and drag him under, deeper than his own destructive pit of vengeance. The curtains fall and the crowd applauds. Obori reminds that death begets death. The air becomes stifling with heat, breath and the staunch smell of incense; Mori returns to his entourage, sifting through the blanket of people, and immediately notes an apparent listlessness in his father’s eyes that others would mistake for graveness, but it was the finer lines Mori’s honed instinct was drawn to. The hidden expression. There is something of interest in the festivities. He returns to Ranmaru’s side, a loyal son at the master’s flank. “Such convincing puppetry in the square. Mere children and their stomachs, nothing about theatrical violence seems to unsettle them these days.” His father doesn’t react save for a mild twitch of the eyebrow, and the lines on his face saw graver press. Right by them passes a trot of ponies kicking up mud, bits of it staining the clan guard’s armour. He howls and raises his spear to jab at the creature’s hindquarters, yelling at the carriage driver to be mindful of street conditions as the pony whinnies in distress.

“Do you see the shamanist tending to those women?” His voice is delivered quickly, swaddled in shadow, in secret. His hand grips the patterned sleeve of his son’s fine uniform. Mori searches the crowd and notes the bent, robed figure wearing a Peasant’s Crown. Such crowns, netted from twine and twig, were a civilian custom to denote a socially protected individual in society. In low-hanging worlds such as this, the people make power their own.

“Yes,” he replies promptly, eyes affixed.

“He may have something for me. I believe it to be so. Speak to him.”

Between the two of them, the reserve of superstition is very hard to overcome in the Jhunkai. Mori had the liberty of free thought and enjoyed it thoroughly, and while the reverence to myth and fancy is ideally beneath him, his father was never void of reason in judgement. No mild protest to desist his position on shamanists and congregants of the supernatural- instead he weaves through the throngs once more, where the incense is as weighty as the humid cold. He had noticed how his father clutched at his string of prayer beads.

There is a crowd around the shamanist, who pores over a scrimshawed ivory shaped like a cornucopia. Huddled figures, all whispers and murmurs and light tongue, damp from the light rain. They notice Mori and part for their lord, jostling and pushing others to make way. 閣下. He stands before the shamanist and his scrimshaw work, the creak of the lantern above casting a shadow over the old man, dousing the light shining off his nettled crown. It is an uneasy feeling. He pulls his hood back, revealing his timeworn face of a thousand lives and stories, much like a trophy.

“You seek your oracle, young man?” Thunder drums overhead, clouds pregnant with a storm. “Or does your father?” Mori recognizes his accent. It is Tumanese. The intuition, he would simply accredit it to his advanced age, but how does a foreigner in these parts get to be herald of the common folk? A smirk pulls at his lips; he lets the amusement slip first, with provocation sitting just beneath. Mori detests outsiders, more so the ones who hail from the principal city, and especially this one, who strikes him as both priestly and parasitic. “I’ll indulge in your flights of fancy this moment, but next I’ll have to question your right to reside in this province. You’ve got your papers, I hope, outlander?”

“Of course, I’m too old to be an affront to anybody, much less the Tokugawa.” He maintains a goodly foundation- his frail fingers picking through the bone shavings. “There is an arrangement to the affairs of this world, young one, and their natures will always affirm themselves, no matter the ilk of disguises man sets upon them. Tell your father that the truth fringes ever closer to those who deserve it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Make your own meaning as you will, young lord.” Bloody shamanists, he thinks, and their vague allusions to self-derived references. The greyer the fog, the further from accountability. Fate, fortuity, nonsense. As Mori saunters back to his father, he had half a mind to hang the chieftain for breaking provincial code by allowing vagrants past the border. The clouds gather in a tighter bundle. It is time to head back to the estate. He relays the message to his father in an unimpressed tone, and wonders aloud if he should flay him to set a warning upon bold-hearted, fortune-spitting old men.

But his father only turned the shade of the moon’s pale side and hastily called for the horsemen. His retinue scrambles to their feet, folding chairs and stowing orneries back into the palanquin. Mori is puzzled by this, and always the means to flair his scholarly disposition, he assures his father the only truth lies in verifiable facts, not fable and providence. He rarely incurred his father’s wrath- but perhaps it was the proximity to death on Obori that made minds scatter from logic. “It would do you good to not cling to your ideas like a burr to a dog’s tail.” He hands his son a velveteen pouch of aurics, and tells him to ride for Wakanara’s master of province. “Give this to his clergyman for his troubles, and escort him back to the official house. You will not ask why, and simply do as I say.”

All this for a tall tale, but there was always reason in his father’s judgement. He nods with some recalcitrance, and mounts his mare. His father lets out a cough as he climbs the gradation into the palanquin, pauses, and turns to impart one final message.

“When you meet the master, simply tell him that this is my final call of service.”


End file.
